


Soul Stained Hands

by lesyeuxverts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood and Gore, Bondage, Character Death, Dark, M/M, cross-dressing, marat sade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 07:28:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1257991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The streets of London are drenched in blood and the casualties of the war haunt Harry as he makes his third attempt to kill the Dark Lord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soul Stained Hands

**Author's Note:**

> The plot is from “Marat/Sade” (play by Peter Weiss, movie adaptation directed by Peter Brook). Voldemort’s “call to the people of Britain” is taken from Marat’s “call to the people of France,” along with other details such as the bathwater red with blood, etc.

The smell of blood heavy in the air was intolerable, the way it pressed itself into Harry’s nostrils and crawled down into his throat and lungs and just hung there, vibrating in the delicate membranes and empty spaces – it made Harry want to vomit, and then he did vomit. The bile burned its way out of his mouth and into the gutter. It swirled with the blood there, and the pattern of it was dark in the light, and Harry bent down to look at it, watched it swirl away. He dipped one finger into the blood, its velvety texture, its silken slide against the dead cells of his skin, death against deadness, and he wiped the blood off his finger onto his long skirt, scrubbed it against the soft fabric until he was sure there was no trace of a bloodstain on his skin.   
  
There was something wrong with London now, something worse than the blood that pooled in the streets like the aftermath of a warm summer rain. There were coils and coils of the red liquid that spurted through the gutters, and the blood was no longer warm with pumping life, no longer a conduit from warm heart to cold fingers and toes, no longer contained in thin ribbony veins. It made Harry want to flinch and cower, but not now, not when he was so close and there was blood pooled in the streets as though to wash away the tiny white petals that had fallen from a summer-blooming tree, it was not now that he could run. He reached up to the locket that he wore around his neck and grasped it until the sunlight-warmed metal cut into the palm of his hand and the pain steadied him. The locket reminded Harry of the reasons he had for this visit to London. His purpose here rested on a pile of reason after reason, corpse after corpse – all of them with eyes that came to life in his dreams, all of them with lips that felt cold against his skin in the dreams where they moved independent of the dead bodies that bore them. In his dreams where the lips came to life and begged and bit, their toothless mouths gaped and held darkness deep within them.  
  
He had come to London, where the streets had turned red and brown with swirling and dried blood, for many reasons, but for one purpose, and that purpose was the dagger strapped to his chest, held over his heart and under the locket. Horcruxes, the both of them had been, and they were heavy still with centuries of history – Voldemort had chosen well, indeed he had, for Harry could feel them thrumming with history and layers of magic, dark and silent against his skin. Harry had a collection of them now, he’d even crept into Malfoy Manor in the day, hiding himself in the shadows of the sunlight, to steal back the diary. A set of seven, a pretty set now that the dark magic was gone, and when it was over Harry would buy a case with black velvet to display them and when people annoyed him – fawned on him or feared him – he would tell them about his collection, maybe even show it to them.   
  
Yes, that was what he would do when it was over, show the Horcruxes to everyone except his love, let the darkness left in them frighten away everyone except his love – his love who knew the darkness and waited for Harry there, his love who had been stained and marked but was nevertheless perfect for Harry. His love had no need to feel the stains left on Harry’s hands when he ripped the pieces of soul out of existence, stains worse than blood. There were chemicals and spells and the comfort of repeated washings, many things that could be done to remove blood stains, but nothing could remove the soul stains from Harry’s hands. He knew it – had seen it in Hermione’s eyes when she turned away from him, she turned away from him and that was the day she took her place in the pile of cold corpses, took her place among the lips and eyes in Harry’s dreams. She had known. She had known that the stain would not come off his hands, the shattered bits of soul clinging to his hands, and Ron had known it and so had they all, even Harry’s dark-haired love who had held him for a moment, taking care not to come into contact with his hands. No one would touch his hands now, it was as though they dripped with a gangrenous disease, foul and leprous and unclean. Voldemort’s soul made him unclean.  
  
It was strange, how they had all known – all of them except Voldemort and his Death Eaters, who were somehow oblivious to the loss of the Horcruxes, even though it seemed that each one took some of Voldemort’s sanity with it as the soul was torn away from this plane. That was why the streets of London dripped with blood, why the corpses piled high in Harry’s dreams, that was why Harry had come here. It was his task, it was his faith – the blood of the many Muggles Voldemort had killed in this latest bout of insanity, a surge that came upon him after Harry had found the dagger in an old cutlery store, bought it and destroyed it – he would keep faith with them, the dead who visited him when he slept. He’d answer the pleas made by mouths that had been cut off from speech, severed from their voice boxes and gasping lungs. Gaping, empty mouths sucked air into nowhere and when they bit and swallowed his flesh, they swallowed it into nothing. He’d answer their unvoiced pleas.  
  
His destruction of the Horcruxes had triggered Voldemort’s insanity and yet his love had pleaded with him not to come to London today, had wanted him to wait, his Severus who had placed his thin fingers in a frame around Harry’s face – careful not to touch his hands, they all knew not to touch his foul hands. Harry had trapped his love, trapped him with words and won the right to come to London today, had trapped him with a picture, shutting a portrait of his beloved Severus in his beautiful locket. A perfect match, he’d told Severus, and his love had looked at him with emotion dark in his eyes – an emotion that Harry wanted to reach out and touch with Legilimency, but he was foul and unclean and would not soil his perfect dark love. The darkness had not dirtied his Severus.   
  
The stench that clung to his unclean hands, clung to the fragments left by Voldemort’s soul, was worse than the smell of the rotting corpses or the metallic smell of drying blood, it was foul and unclean and Harry had come to London to put an end to it. They had all known, everyone in the Order who had seen Dumbledore’s hand withered and dark, they had known that the Horcruxes would take Harry’s hands from him, turn them unclean and rotten. He had seen it in their eyes, wide pitying eyes that stared and held the weight of the Prophecy – he saw it in their eyes when they looked at him, Ginny who had turned away from his filth and said to all the Order that she didn’t know how she’d ever touched someone as rotten and putrid as Harry, and even Molly Weasley, who had once embraced him but now held herself away, afraid to touch him. Gentle Remus with his vicious curse – he knew how to live in the darkness – and Moody who was paranoid and battle-weary, they were not afraid of him but still they were wary, worried that the stench that clung to Harry’s hands would infect them too. No one touched him. In the end it was only Severus, his wayward love who’d returned at last, only his dark love who would touch Harry now and even his Severus never touched his hands.  
  
Severus, his love – those words made Harry stop inside, made him stop in the street where the sunlight could warm his face and his hands, where the blood was pooled under his feet, staining his shoes and his skirt – Severus, his love, who’d returned to him at last with heated apologies and confessions. With a kiss pressed on Severus’s eyebrow, Harry had refused to hear them. When his hands reeked of corruption, when he murdered a man seventh by seventh, a slow complete death, a death worse than death, the destruction of a soul, when Harry himself was in the middle of the darkness stinking of evil, he had no need to hear about the stain on Severus’s hands, the green light impossible to erase as it squirmed into every crevice, every pore and haunted his love with its glow. Harry had refused to hear it, the confessions, the explanations, the wails and screams in Severus’s nightmares, the declarations – he had followed his love to the dagger, the very last Horcrux and when they’d found it, after he’d wrenched Voldemort’s soul out of it, Harry had kissed his love and that in the end was enough absolution for his dark-haired prince. Harry’s lips were not unclean.   
  
His precious dark prince, his love – Harry wondered how he had once hated this man, how he had been blind to his perfect match, the night to cover his wretched filth, the only possible match for the foul thing he had become. His Severus, who bound Harry’s hands and held him close in the night, had kept himself from being fouled all these years. His Severus was not unclean. His Severus kissed every dead cell on Harry’s body, licked every skin cell below his wrists, learned him inch by inch. Severus was not unclean and it was his touch that sanctified Harry, his mouth that worshipped Harry, and that made the corruption and rot and leprosy stop at the wrists, Severus contained the darkness that seeped out of the soul stains.   
  
In the end, when he tore the last piece of soul out of Voldemort’s body and banished it, in the end Harry thought that the willowy slim tatters of soul that clung to his hands would be gone as well, gone with the rest of Voldemort. Then Harry would be free to touch his love with clean hands – run his hand down the length of Severus’s slim body, tease every line and angle until he’d learned the shape of his love and knew it by heart. Harry would lay a hand on his love’s breastbone and feel the steady beat, would trace the elegant curve of his ears and the changeable arch of his eyebrows, learning every texture, every pore. Severus would no longer tease Harry, no longer refuse to suck on his fingers, no longer handcuff him to the bed and trap Harry’s unclean hands away from his own unstained skin. He would no longer immerse Harry in the slow relentless torture, fucking him hard until Harry was on the verge of coming and then holding him there – unable to touch, unable to move, with the smell of sex and need that filled the air until breath was impossible and he needed to explode.  
  
Yes, it would be different when Voldemort was gone and Harry’s hands were clean – perhaps he would reverse everything, tie Severus to the bed and torment him, holding his cock because Harry so longed to touch it with his hands. He longed to grasp Severus’s cock with fingers not filthy and soul-stained, slide his fingers up and down and into his lover, teasing him and holding him trapped on the bed until at last Harry would bend his head down and taste his lover, torment him and worship him until he writhed and begged and then he would tease him again, licking his cock and licking his entrance before at last he would consent to worship his love and slide into him and answer his every plea. Severus would gasp and his dark eyebrows would twitch but with Harry’s hands clean, he would not object.  
  
That was why Harry was here – one of the reasons in the pile, next to Hermione’s body where it lay with her bones broken and her limbs bent at strange angles – yes, Harry needed to touch his love with clean hands and needed to stop Voldemort, stop the writing of Voldemort’s calls to the people of Britain and the blood in the street and all the useless deaths. Useless deaths that had occurred while Harry writhed under his love, while Harry was fucked into the mattress with his hands bound above his head – Harry had heard of the deaths afterward, had heard of Voldemort’s incendiary call to the people and the blood and the silver blades falling. He had known but it was now, when he realized that the blood in the street had stained his shoes and the hem of the skirt he wore, it was now that he understood why his Severus had asked him to wait. His love had not wanted him to see the filthy streets of this town, but his reasons were piled, one on top of the other and there were no choices left, here at the end of things, not here where the pigeons bent their beaks down and dipped into the blood on the streets as though it was water.   
  
Harry had been denied twice in his attempts to kill Voldemort and the man had gone to hide in the Muggle world, away from the Death Eaters that betrayed him and unwittingly led Harry to him, away from the loathsome Wormtail who had cut off his silver hand and let the blood spurt down onto his own wand before throwing himself down to embrace Remus’s legs, the double traitor who had betrayed his insane Dark Lord. Voldemort in hiding was vicious and insane, his murders indirect but no less bloody, Voldemort writing his calls to the people of Britain and spurring them on to commit hideous acts against one another, weaving a dark spell into their souls that made them wash their streets with blood. Voldemort had built the pile of corpses, the pyramid of skulls that haunted Harry’s dreams. Harry had been denied twice and now he would end it – three times lucky and three times blessed, he had whispered into the curve of his Severus’s shoulder before he left that morning, he was blessed by Severus’s love and his parents’ love and his Headmaster’s love, three deaths and three protection spells wound around Harry while he was clean, and all of them sealed together now under the dirt and stain by his dark love, his Severus who would not be allowed to die for him because Harry would end it now. He would not be denied again.  
  
It had been the locket that Harry had found first, Slytherin’s locket, and in the months that Harry had carried it, ripping Voldemort’s soul away one seventh at a time, it had begun to turn Harry into a Slytherin, cunning and wary and full of twisted Slytherin thoughts. It had turned him Slytherin, it and his dark-haired love whose cheeks were hollow with worries, his forehead canyoned with wrinkles, his dark love who was so Slytherin that the air around him vibrated with the hisses of Parseltongue. That was why Harry was in London now, coming out onto the cleaner streets with the hem of his skirt trailing blood on the sidewalk, obliterating his sticky footprints. A disguise, a very Slytherin disguise, because Voldemort would never recognize the Boy Who Lived in a skirt with a hat to hide his scar and a magic-dampening charm to hide his aura. The skirt had belonged to Hermione, it and the blouse and the hat held on Harry’s head by a ribbon. Her closet had stood untouched at headquarters since the attack that added her corpse to the pile of corpses that filled his dreams. With some charms, the clothes had fit Harry – he had summoned them from her closet, not touching her other clothes with his leprous hands – and Harry had crept out of the room that he shared with his love, not waking him for another argument, and he had made his way to London and here at last he was, disguised as a Muggle woman and standing outside Voldemort’s door.   
  
His Severus was awake by now, had risen from the bed they shared in the Edinburgh Order headquarters, discovered that Harry had slipped his hands out of the nightly restraints – Severus with the sleepy morning look on his face that Harry had wanted to touch, run a finger across the skin that was smooth with all its wrinkles rubbed away by sleep, linger at the corners of his love’s eyes, the corner of his love’s mouth, touch the tip of his nose before leaning in for a morning kiss – he would do it after, when his hands were clean. Severus would make him another batch of that soap, his Potions Master love, his prince, that soap that almost took the stink of Voldemort’s soul off Harry’s hands even now, and Harry would scrub and scrub – Severus watching from the bathroom door with that familiar quirky tilt to his eyebrow – and Harry’s hands would be clean, then he would throw himself at his Severus and learn at last if his love was ticklish. He would touch his Severus when his hands were clean.  
  
Harry stood at the plain Muggle door – there was no hint of blood there, no visible stain – and wanted to reach out one time, send his thoughts across the miles between them to touch his dark love one last time. No, he could not defile his love, could not touch him when he was filthy like this. After, then, afterwards he would touch his Severus again and again and again, touch him and tickle him and taste him, taste every pore of his body. Harry raised his leprous hand and reached out to dirty the doorbell, heard the faint chime echo through the house.  
  
It was Lucius Malfoy who answered the door, tall and strange in Muggle clothes, and Harry tilted his head down, held his breath and counted until he knew he was not recognized. “Harriet Henderson,” he said to Malfoy, wanting to reach up and trace a finger across those clean thin lips, wanted to make them as filthy and diseased as Harry’s hands. “I come with news for Lord Voldemort, information about an uprising in Cornwall.”  
  
Harry followed Malfoy down the dim hallway lined with Muggle photographs – his hand clutched the locket, hiding it from view, and he felt his pulse throb in his fingers. There it was, the final door was in front of him, in his scar he felt the aching presence of Voldemort behind it and this was it. The corpses in his dreams, their lips and eyes frozen now, their limbs in disarray – they were waiting for him to honor their faith in him. The Muggles who had not yet shed their blood into the London streets, who had not lost their heads for the gruesome pyramid in front of the guillotine, they were waiting for Harry to save them. His dark love, his beloved prince – waiting in Edinburgh, drinking a second cup of coffee at this hour and waiting for news – his Severus needed a clean love, unstained and free of contamination. Harry gripped the locket tighter and entered the room.   
  
Voldemort – hideous, disfigured still from the curse Harry had cast on him during their last encounter – was sitting in a bathtub, elbows propped up on the sides. He was writing, quill poised in one hand and inkpot at his elbow. “Go and fetch Bella, Lucius,” he said. “I must dictate my call … my call to the people of Britain.” Voldemort’s reptilian skin was scaly and perhaps it was dry and painful, soothed by the moisture in the bath. Harry mumbled something when Voldemort addressed him and was told to move closer.   
  
The floor was hardwood and shone in the sunlight that came from a window – Harry kept his head tilted down, his scar hidden, masked by the hat in a charade of respect. As he approached the bathtub, Harry held the locket tight in his fingers and told Voldemort in careful slow words that he was come to report on the rebellion in Cornwall. Voldemort’s eyes glinted red in the sunlight as he asked Harry for details, pressed him for names and Harry leaned closer and closer to the scaly creature in the bathtub.  
  
Voldemort was more insane than ever, manic and loud in his plans for victory and it was hard to see him like this, most of his soul gone, with only a slim one seventh of it clinging to his body and fragments staining Harry’s hands, the destruction of a soul entirely Harry’s fault. Harry caressed the locket with his filthy fingers, because he had done this, reduced Voldemort to this creature in the bathtub with the water tinted rose with his own blood. It had been Voldemort who had started it, Voldemort who had made the Horcruxes and tried to kill Harry countless times, Voldemort who had killed his parents and his Sirius and his Hermione, Voldemort who had tortured his dark love for long years and it was enough, enough to brush aside any lingering pity that Harry would have felt for the stick-dry creature that was almost soulless now and reduced to rasping orders to the remaining Death Eaters from his bathtub.   
  
It was enough, and Harry let the locket swing free from his fingers as he fumbled under his blouse to pull the dagger free. It seemed only right that after all this time of being influenced by the locket, being turned Slytherin by the locket, the Harry should use Gryffindor’s dagger to kill Voldemort – not that his approach had been particularly Gryffindor, but Harry thought that his love would tolerate a few vestiges of Gryffindor nature and the Gryffindor in Harry wanted Voldemort to die with the weapon made by his ancestor’s enemy, wanted Voldemort to die at the point of a sharp blade and splash more blood into his bathwater.   
  
Voldemort saw the locket, recognized it, just as Harry retrieved the dagger and the man reached for his wand and called for Bella. Harry raised the dagger high into the air and plunged it down into Voldemort’s soft scaly throat. The metal of the dagger was warm from being held against Harry’s skin and it was warmed further by the spurting blood, and the smell in the air again, the heavy coppery miasma overwhelmed Harry’s sense of smell and he stumbled back from the bathtub, letting the dagger fall into the water. He stared at Voldemort and there was only a pathetic creature crumpled and dead in the bathtub, the last seventh of his soul torn away from this world. There were no dramatic last twitchings or rantings or signs of power.   
  
Harry looked down at his hands, looked for the tattered bits of torn soul that had hung there for so long and he lifted his hands up to his face to look more closely and it was gone, the soul-stain was gone from his hands. They were clean again, the odor of the decaying soul gone, the gangrenous disease that made everyone flinch away from him gone, and Harry was going to go home to his dark-haired love, was going to touch his dark love for the first time with these clean hands. He would worship the body of his Severus with hands that were uncontaminated and pristine, hands washed with his love’s good soap. He would trace every line of his love’s body, he would hold his Severus down against the soft mattress and press his Severus into the mattress until every cell, every pore had been touched and tasted and worshipped. He’d trace every iota of his love with fingers and tongue and cock and love him and fuck him and keep him forever. Harry reached into the bloody bathwater and retrieved the dagger before he Apparated away from the last corpse, Apparated back to his love.


End file.
